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Eugene Lee-Hamilton
Eugene James Lee-Hamilton (6 January 1845 - 7 September 1907) was an English poet and novelist. Life Lee-Hamilton was born in London, the son of James Lee-Hamilton (who died soon after his son's birth) by his wife Matilda (Abadam). Eugene as a child lived with his widowed mother and her brother, William Abadam, at the Chateau de Biranos, near Pau, until Abadam's death about 1854, when his mother took him to Paris. There she married her second husband, Henry Ferguson Paget, an engineer, whose active sympathy with the Polish insurrection had compelled him to leave his employment in Poland.Lee, 442. Eugene was educated in France and Germany, partly at school and partly under tutors at home. In 1864 he entered Oriel College, Oxford, gaining a Taylorian scholarship for "French with German" in that year, and leaving the university without a degree.Lee, 443. In July 1869 he was nominated an attaché, and was employed for some months in the foreign office. He was appointed to the embassy at Paris under Lord Lyons on 21 Feb. 1870. He was with the embassy at Tours, Bordeaux, and Versailles during the Franco-German war. In 1871 he acted as secretary to Sir Alexander Cockburn at Geneva in the Alabama arbitration, and suffered in health from the pressure of work. In January 1873 he was promoted to 3rd secretary, and transferred to the legation at Lisbon under Sir Charles Murray on 10 Feb. He was unemployed from 1 January to 8 September 1875, when he resigned on account of illness. He had been an accomplished skater and dancer, but nervous disease developed, with the result that for 20 years he was incapacitated from all physical exertion, and had to lie on his back. He lived at Florence with his mother and his half-sister, Miss Violet Paget ("Vernon Lee"), spending the summers at Siena or the Bagni di Lucca. His intellectual vitality was uninjured by his physical disability. His health was soon sufficiently restored to enable him to indulge his gifts as a talker, and his room became one of the centres of intellectual cosmopolitan society in Florence. His visitors included Henry James and Paul Bourget. In time, too, he was able to compose and to dictate fragments of verse. By 1896 his recovery was completed. From a visit to Canada and the United States in 1897 he returned a "new man," and on 21 July 1898, at Boldxe, Hampshire, he married Annie E. Holdsworth, the novelist. They settled in a villa between Florence and Fiesole. A volume of verse, entitled Forest Notes, in which both husband and wife collaborated, appeared in 1899. In 1900 they moved to the Villa Benedettini, San Gervasio, where in 1903 a daughter, Persis Margaret, was born. In 1903 he made a selection from his poems for the "Canterbury Poets" series, for which William Sharp wrote a preface. Their child died in 1904, and the father's grief is recorded in Mimma Bella (published in 1909), a volume of elegiac sonnets. Hie depression culminated in a paralytic stroke, from which Lee-Hamilton died on 7 September 1907, at the Villa Pierotti, Bagni di Lucca. He was buried in the new protestant cemetery outside the Porta Romana, Florence. A portrait painted during his last illness by Stephen Haweis and a beautiful death mask are in the possession of his widow. Poetry was Lee-Hamilton's consolation throughout his long illness. His earliest volume, Poems and Transcripts, appeared in 1878; then followed Gods, Saints, and Men (1880), The New Medusa, and other poems (1882), Apollo and Marsyas, and other poems (1884). Most of The Sonnets of the Wingless Hours (published in 1894), his most characteristic production, were written between 1880 and 1888. He excelled in the poetic form of the sonnet, of the technique of which he had a perfect mastery, and the dramatic impersonal Imaginary Sonnets (1888) and the autobiographical Sonnets of the Wingless Hours rank with the best of their kind. Lee-Hamilton also wrote The Fountain' of Youth, a fantastic tragedy in verse (1891); 2 novels, The Lord of the Dark Red Star: Being the story of the supernational influences in the life of an Italian despot of the 13th century (1903), and The Romance of the Fountain (1905); and a metrical translation of Dante's Inferno (1898). Recognition The Provost and Fellows of Oriel College sponsor the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition, which offers an annual prize of £60 for the best Petrarchan sonnet in English submitted by an undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge universities. The sonnet can be on any topic of the author’s choosing, and enjambment between the 8th and 9th lines is permitted. The poetry competition prize was founded by Eliza Ann Lee-Hamilton by bequest in 1943, in memory of Lee-Hamilton, in order to encourage the composition of the Petrarchan sonnet in Oxford and Cambridge.Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition, Oriel College, University of Oxford. Web, Feb. 17, 2017. Publications Poetry *''Poems and Transcripts. Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood, 1878. *Gods, Saints and Men. London: W Satchell, 1880. *The New Medusa, and other poems. London: Elliot Stock, 1882. *Apollo and Marsyas. London: Eliot Stock, 1884. *Imaginary Sonnets. London: Elliot Stock, 1888. *Sonnets of the Wingless Hours. London: Eliot Stock, 1894; Chicago: Stone & Kimball, 1894. *Forest Notes'' (with Annie E Holdsworth). London: Grant Richards, 1899. *''Dramatic Sonnets, Poems, and Ballads: Selections'' (with preface by William Sharp). . London & Newcastle on Tyne, UK: Walter Scott, 1903. *''Mimma Bella. London: Heinemann, 1909; Portland, ME: Thomas B. Mosher, 1909. *''Gods, Saints, and Men / The new Medusa / Sonnets of the wingless hours. New York: Garland, 1984. *''Selected Poems: A Victorian craftsman rediscovered'' (edited by MacDonald P Jackson). Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002. Play *''The Fountain of Youth: A fantastic tragedy, in five acts. London: Eliot Stock, 1891. Novels *The Lord of the Dark Red Star. London & Newcastle on Tyne, UK: Walter Scott, 1903. *The Romance of the Fountain. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905. Translated *Dante, ''The Inferno. London: Grant Richards, 1898. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Eugene Lee-Hamilton, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Feb. 17, 2017. See also *List of British poets References * .Wikisource, Web, Feb. 17, 2017. Notes External links ;Poems *Lee-Hamilton in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "Sir Walter Raleigh to a Caged Linnet," "Izaak Walton to River and Brook," "Charles II of Spain to Approaching Death," "To My Tortoise, Chronos," "Sunken Gold," "Sea-Shell Murmurs," "A Flight from Glory," "What the Sonnet Is," "On His ''Sonnets of the Wingless Hours" ;Audio / video * ;About * Lee-Hamilton, Eugene Jacob Category:1845 births Category:1907 deaths Category:English poets Category:English translators Category:Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford Category:Writers from London Category:English male poets Category:19th-century English poets Category:19th-century translators Category:19th-century male writers Category:19th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:English diplomats Category:Poets Category:Sonneteers